via OUP blog by Luke Heaton
“mental-human-experience-mindset” by johnhain. CC0 via Pixabay.
Mathematics is more than the memorization and application of various rules. Although the language of mathematics can be intimidating, the concepts themselves are built into everyday life. In the following excerpt from A Brief History of Mathematical Thought, Luke Heaton examines the concepts behind mathematics and the language we use to describe them.
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via the Guardian by Gavin Haynes
View in to the past: a postcard of Portland, Dorset, by the artist AR Quinton.
Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
Things we forgot we already knew: the postcard industry is dying. The country’s oldest postcard publishers J Salmon has been churning small coloured squares of card out of its factory in Kent for more than 100 years. Until now. The fifth-generation brothers who still run the company have sent a letter to their clients, advising them that the presses will cease printing at the end of the year, and they will sell off their remaining stock throughout 2018.
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via 3 Quarks Daily: Gary Saul Morson at The New Criterion
In Russia, history is too important to leave to the historians. Great novelists must show how people actually lived through events and reveal their moral significance. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn explained in his 1970 Nobel Prize lecture, literature transmits “condensed and irrefutable human experience” in a form that “defies distortion and falsehood. Thus literature … preserves and protects a nation’s soul.”
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via Boing Boing by Andrea James
John Kobuki demonstrates the remarkable patience, dexterity, and craftsmanship required to spend 40 minutes shaping a clear glass sphere with a flower inside.
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via Interesting Literature
As we mention in our collection of interesting facts about Arthur Miller (1915-2005), the noted US playwright’s family had been relatively prosperous, but during the Great Depression of the 1930s, as with many other families, their economic situation became very precarious. This experience had a profound impact on Miller’s political standpoint, and this can be seen time and time again in his work for the theatre. He aligned himself with the leftist politics of the 1930s, namely socialism. His early successes as a playwright were in the genre of social drama. That is, a social problem or issue in contemporary society is explored on stage. More specifically, the dramatic conflict arises usually from a moral dilemma faced by the individual that is related to some kind of flaw or corruption in the social order.
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via The Guardian by Press Association
The researchers also found that the jellyfish slowed down during the day if they were ‘kept awake’ at night. Photograph: Handout/Reuters
Snoozing jellyfish have confirmed that a brain is not necessary for sleep.
Scientists made the discovery after observing a primitive jellyfish called Cassiopea that lives upside down on the sea floor and lacks any kind of central nervous system.
The creatures, which resemble miniature cauliflower heads, have bodies that pulse with a steady rhythm.
Videos of the jellyfish taken over 24 hours showed that they pulsed less frequently at night, but they could be “woken up” by dropping a little food into the tanks where they were kept.
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I thought sleep deprivation was considered to be torture. Maybe not if it is tried with a jellyfish.
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via Boing Boing by Andrea James
When watching assembly line robots of today, it's easy to forget that gruelling repetitive work used to be done manually. This beautiful footage from 1936 shows the precision needed, and it's beautifully lit and shot in black and white.
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via Big Think by Robby Berman
Ostracized. (LYNN GALLAGHER)
By and large, we’d prefer that people like us. We are who we are, of course, but we can change specific behaviors. So if there’s something we do that drives others away, we’d at least like to know what it is. Researchers have put a lot of work into finding out if there are behaviors that universally rub people the wrong way. There are.
We’ve grouped these behaviors into four categories according to the impression they create, with some overlaps. People who do these things may or may not really be the jerks they seem like, but these are the personalities their behaviors can imply.
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via OUP blog by Nathan T. Elkins
Photo of the Tabula Traiana plaque that is found in the Iron Gate gorge of the Danube on the Serbian coast. Was erected to commemorate the defeat of the Dacian kings by the Romans by Rlichtefeld. CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
On 18 September, in AD 96, the 65 year-old senator, Nerva, became emperor of Rome (Figure 1). His predecessor, Domitian, was assassinated in the culmination of a palace conspiracy; there is no evidence that Nerva had anything to do with the plot. The Senate officially damned Domitian’s memory, erasing his name from public monuments and tearing down his statues and portraits. Rome’s senatorial aristocracy bitterly resented him on account of his autocratic governance and the excessive treason trials and executions that befell senators towards the end of his reign.
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